The invention relates to sail-battens with longish batten bars, which are positioned one behind the other and which are connected by bending joints in a way, that they can bend in relation to each other until a stop is hit.
The U.S. Pat. Ser. No. 2,378,877 characterises the state of the art, according to which the forces acting at the limiting stops are essentially directed in the longitudinal direction of the batten. This has the disadvantage, that the forces in the joints and at the stops must be very big, because the possible lever arm is only small.
The aim is a reliable, lightweight and not too expensive sail batten, which gets into the desired curvature already at minimal winds and which then keeps this widely also at strong winds. This aim is achieved by the characterising features of the claims. So, according to claim 1, FIGS. 1 to 7, 15, 16, the batten forces caused by the wind forces remain small, because the battens are about 100 times as long as they are wide, and because this is used to get long lever arms: With a length Ls of the batten bar of 5% of the length L of the sail batten and with a length of the lever arm of half of the length of the respective batten bar or of the width B of the known batten joints it follows, that the forces at the inventive batten are less than the 0,5 B/0,5 Ls=0.5xc3x970.01 L/0.5xc3x970.05 L=0.2 fold, i.e. less than 20% of the value at the known constructions. Moreover, because of the large distance between the stops, the dimensional accuracy becomes less essential. Moreover, the usual, highly stressed bending joints may be dismissed, because the batten bars 1 and the overlapping bars (way limiting members) 2 limit themthelves by a clearance their transverse movements and by this their relative bending movements.